


stand nearer, though it be but for a brief moment

by oddcellist



Category: The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Developing Relationship, First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:41:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddcellist/pseuds/oddcellist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Achilles and Patroklos met in Phthia, but for Achilles to claim that they were boon companions from the start is pure revisionist history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stand nearer, though it be but for a brief moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cori Lannam (corilannam)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corilannam/gifts).



> _allá moi âsson stêthi: mínunthá per amphibalónte  
> allêlous olooîo tetarpômestha góoio._
> 
> (But stand nearer to me: though it be but for a brief moment,  
> embracing one another let us have our fill of dark lament.)
> 
> XXIII 97–98
> 
> _allà tí moi tôn êdos epeì phílos ôleth' hetaîros  
> Pátroklos, tòn egô perì pántôn tîon hetaírôn  
> îson emêi kefalêi? tòn apôlesa…_
> 
> (But what enjoyment of these things can there be for me,  
> when my dear companion Patroklos has perished, whom I treasured  
> above all my companions, equal to myself? Him I have lost…)
> 
> XVIII 80–82

It is not in the first year, when the Achaeans have not yet begun to believe that the siege of Troy will be a rather greater project than they had expected, and it is not in the ninth year, when the men know even each other's night-breathing better than they do their wives, but after another of the too-common sorties without any gain except in corpses, someone at the feast laid out for the chiefs makes an ill-considered comment. Perhaps it is Sthenelos. It is nothing direct, an offhand comment about the way Patroklos and Achilles remain somehow a unit, between themselves, even as they move among the assembly. But even as it says what everyone knows, tumbling into a moment of stillness, everyone holds his breath, watching Achilles to see what he will do.

He leans over the table, but Patroklos looks at him, and he subsides. People relax; conversation begins at the edges and rushes in towards the center. The moment seems to have been forgotten, and there is no one around the table who is not happy with things as they are—except for Achilles, who leans over to Patroklos, muttering darkly. "And what did he want to hear? That you bought my loyalty with hounds and cocks and coots? Or to goad me into saying something he could lampoon in the safety of his camp?" There is no response; Achilles knows between one breath and the next that Patroklos is safeguarding his interests; this is the pattern of their dense entanglement with one another, unspoken and yet no less potent a force for the smiles that occasionally pop up before them, the ones that say Achilles is grown enough, has proven himself enough the hero to seek out more suitable companions. (The women never seem to count.)

They return to their camp, this night passing seamlessly into the too-great ranks of similar nights, the baffled leisure of heroes and the muffled grunts of warriors bandaging wounds leading to a wordless frustration that hangs low over the Greek fires.

Some time after the near-miss with Sthenelos, during one of the lulls in the fighting, when the warriors are bottled in their own camps to avoid having to put on the masks of the grand coalition, Achilles apparently develops an urge for revelation, here where it does not matter quite so much. The way Achilles tells it at the fire, Achilles and Patroklos were friends as soon as Patroklos arrived in Phthia. "Oh yes," he'll say, eyes daring any stranger to question the strength of their companionship, "I knew as soon as I saw him that we'd do great things together."

There are no strangers to Achilles among the Myrmidons, and not a one is fool enough to take up the challenge in Achilles' eyes. Fortunately for posterity, there's also Patroklos.

The first time Achilles and Patroklos meet, or at least one of the first—there was some confusion at the beginning, but Patroklos thinks that is justified, given how unsettled things were back home—their fathers push them together, clearly hoping that kinship will allow them to be companions. It doesn't quite take. Patroklos is pretty sure he had a good excuse for cutting a ridiculous figure—skittish, nervous about his strength and anxious about having to flee again, despite the reassurances of everybody around him, for then where would they go? But in retrospect, he thinks, Achilles was an utter ass, pushing him to the side every chance he got, unused to sharing and asking constantly when the visitors would go home. He shakes his head; neither of them was at their finest, then.

Their fathers keep throwing them together, probably for lack of better options, and it gradually dawns on Patroklos that he does not need to worry about Achilles; even in their simple games, it is clear who is stronger, and he knows how to take care of himself. It takes Achilles a little longer, but the day does come when Achilles asks Patroklos to leave the great hall together with him, and from that point on the two are inseparable.

They are not quite a matched pair, Patroklos slightly older and Achilles clearly set to be the taller one, but they are sent together to Chiron, and if he could have resented the ease with which Achilles takes to the hunt and to archery, the head he has for the herbs and healing lore the centaur teaches them, they are long past the point when Achilles would have lorded it over him. He has the lyre and his horses, after all, and when he rides he sees nothing but the world stretching out before them.

When they become men, it breaks over them like a storm from the east, and some days Patroklos feels like it will never stop, like the sheer need he is convinced is there for all to see on his face will keep pressing outwards until he explodes in a bloody shower of frustration. Achilles, though younger, is not far behind, and both of them spend a perhaps inappropriate amount of time plotting an escape from Chiron's careful supervision, even from the company of the other; Patroklos thinks he could still identify the bushes along a ten-stadion stretch of the valley by sight alone.

It should surprise him more than it does, but when it comes it seems so inevitable as to be an ordinary event: he does not remember who turns to the other first, eyes gone dark with desire. But by the time they are done fumbling, lying dazed and with limbs ungracefully askew, they know that the push and pull of it all, the yearning to curl into each other, has only sealed their easy companionship more tightly against the blank incomprehension of others—and isn't that what their fathers wanted for them, that they become steadfast friends?

Chiron declares soon after that they are ready to descend to the plain; greeting their fathers, they marvel at how small they seem, how easily they tire. During the days, Phoinix and Thetis try to give them more advice, stored against some catastrophe only the two of them can see, but the youths see each other every evening, more fascinated by their strength and the timbre of their paired gasps than with anything they could be told.

Fortified by the memory, Patroklos feels ready for anything. They are on the Trojan shore; there is fame to be won. It is not the short war they were promised, but the Trojans are not too good to be reduced. Yes, he thinks: they are in their finest years, Achilles is close at hand; surely no god could deny them their glory now.


End file.
